Taken from Times of India:
BANGALORE: A wearable device developed by a 23-year-old Indian based Kerala has just concluded an overwhelmingly successful campaign on crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. Fin, a tiny hardware product that you can wear on your thumb as a ring and which converts your whole palm into a gesture interface, has raised about $200,000 from some 1,600 people around the world who have pre-ordered the product.
Fin's initial target was to raise $100,000, but in mid-February, when it found its target getting accomplished faster than it anticipated, it extended the campaign's deadline to March 9, resulting in a doubling of its collections.
This is the second Indian hardware-cum-software startup to have had a great innings on a crowdfunding platform in recent times. Late last year, Gecko, a coin-sized electronic device with a multitude of uses and developed and marketed by a Bangalore startup, raised orders worth $135,485, more than double the initially targeted $50,000.
Fin has been developed by Rohildev N, who grew up in Malappuram in Kerala and who graduated from Kathir College of Engineering in Coimbatore in 2012. Eight months ago he established RHL Vision Technologies at the Startup Village in Kochi to work on touchless technologies, a project he started during his final year of engineering.
RHL Vision was among 50 startups shortlisted from around the world to pitch and showcase their ideas at Pioneers Festival, one of Europe's largest startup events, held in Vienna last year. It was one of the top 15 companies (from 11 countries) at the TechCrunch CES Hardware Battlefield in Las Vegas this year, a competition for hardware startups. And Rohildev would have been the youngest speaker at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February, but for a mix-up that led to his visa application being rejected.
Fin, worn as a ring on your thumb, has sensors in them that can uniquely recognize each segment (phalange) of the fingers. It also has Bluetooth that can be used to link Fin to other devices like your smartphone, TV or another wearable device. So you can assign different functions to each finger segment, and you can perform a function by just making your thumb touch the relevant segment.
The possibilities this creates are phenomenal. The simple touch of your thumb on a finger segment can send an emergency alert, silence your phone, move to the next track on your playlist, pick up a call - all without taking the phone out of your pocket or bag. Your fingers can be your numeric keypad. You can switch on or off or change the channel on your TV just using your palm. If you have home automation devices, your palm can operate those.
For the visually impaired, Fin's promises are amazing - simple taps on their fingers can help them dial a number, navigate using a map, open and read out an SMS, control their wheelchair.
"There's no effort, no stress. Unlike other touchless technologies, you don't have to raise your hand, wave your arms, nothing that tires you," says Rohildev. For instance, Ring, from California-based Logbar, can be used to perform functions similar to those that Fin can, but it involves gestures.
Fin will be priced at $120 each, but that cost could come down with mass manufacturing. The first shipments are expected in September. "The Indiegogo campaign helped us identify some good manufacturers and distributors too. Many want to fund us now. We expect to finalize a $1 million funding in another month," Rohildev says. The moneys raised will be used to complete the product development and for marketing.
Source : Times of India
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